


Homeward Bound

by Eevee



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: 5 Times, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 01:58:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1964628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eevee/pseuds/Eevee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The four first kisses of Hikaru Shindou, and the one that never happend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homeward Bound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aoigensou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aoigensou/gifts).



> I know that the Five Times thing is super 2009, but then there were these intriguing requests and four of them were about Hikaru.

 

"God, Shindou," is what Waya says when Hikaru tells him that he's gay, "can't you do _anything_ right? Did your mum never tell you about the birds and the bees?"

"There's nothing wrong with it," is what Hikaru answers, and he thinks he is allowed the indignance over Waya's narrow mind. He knows what normalcy is, and thanks to a week spent reading about stuff on the internet, he also knows just how very not alone he is in defying it this way. Unfortunately, the explanation he has prepared is not one that corresponds to Waya's complaints. Waya isn't going into some weird shock or ranting about it being wrong and disgusting; he sounds exactly like he did the day it came to light that Hikaru sometimes wears the same pair of socks two days on a row, which was about how he sounded back when he realised that Hikaru didn't know who keep game records. 

"Sure, whatever. Marry the guy, throw a party. I'm just saying - seriously, of all people - "

"Hey," says Hikaru, insulted, "if you don't actually have a problem with me going out with a guy, how about you put your girlfriend credits to some use and help me iron my shirt."

Waya gives him a look like back when he had to show Hikaru how to stack the dishes in the drying rack. "How about you ask your mum," he grumbles, "or get yourself a wife."

 

 

**I. Keep on smiling**

The first time Hikaru enters the Tengen league goes something like this:

First, the mounting wave of relief. He wasn't certain, far from it, that he would win this game; the result was unclear into the endgame, they had to count for points. But he has won by two points and half, and it is as if the anxiousness held him captive by his bones and muscles. His pulse is agitated and his breathing is shallow, but the job is done: he won the game, he's going to be playing in the Tengen league, Touya can shove the complaints Hikaru already knows he is going to be making about the mess in the upper left corner. Hikaru has never quite known how to explain what it is he hopes to reach by playing better and better Go, Ko Yongha be damned, but he knows that this game was a big stepping stone on the way there. He's going to play in the big leagues now, against the real top players, against people who can play Go even more beautiful than this - 

The second thing that happens is that Hikaru in a devastating second forgets everything about Go, because he looks up to stare Saeki-san directly in the face. Saeki-san looks exactly like you would expect from a man who has just forfeited his first chance to enter one of the title leagues, all pale hair and clever eyes and he's not smiling and that's because of Hikaru.

Lately, Hikaru has been absurdly preoccupied by Saeki-san's smile, and particularly by Saeki-san smiling at him. He had even been wondering how he was going to go about this game because of how he feels it in his _knees_ when Saeki-san reaches out to ruffle his bangs. It never felt like that when Kawaii-san does it, and Hikaru is unnerved by what

Saeki-san does to him by merely being Saeki-san. It disturbs him how much he likes it.

"Well, congratulations," says Saeki-san in the present as he climbs to his feet, and then he smiles and looks nothing like his usual: self, "I suppose it was a good thing it was you, after all. This way, Morishita-sensei can still brag about the members of his study group."

There are a thousand unspeakable moments that are falling to pieces between them, and there is nothing Hikaru can do to stop it because even if he could take his win away, he wouldn't do it. If there is anything that can make this okay, then Hikaru doesn't know what that is. So he watches Saeki-san move to leave the room, and then he runs after him pulls him back by the sleeve of his t-shirt.

"Do you wanna have dinner?"

Saeki-san looks at him, then, looks at him in a way that makes Hikaru regret the offer because there's something awful about seeing Saeki-san's feelings so open in his face. 

They don't speak until they're at Saeki-san's place with a lukewarm pizza, but Saeki-san's still unreadable expression hasn't done much to reassure Hikaru about anything. It's been a fourty minute journey in uncomfortable silences and the tension of all the things unsaid.

"Shindou, do you seriously want to discuss the game?"

"Yeah, sure, of course, but I wanted to - " but Hikaru doesn't know why he's here, doesn't know why he'd follow Saeki-san home, can't explain why it is so important to him that things are going to be okay. So he tries again, from that angle. "It's not going to be weird, is it? You and I, I mean?"

Saeki stares into his eyes and Hikaru knows that he's got to look back, and whatever kind of weird thing is going on between him and Saeki-san, it can't get any worse than what it is right now.

It occurs to him that he's never been in a situation like this with anyone, but he doesn't realise just what it means until Saeki-san reaches out to touch his cheek. _That_ is when everything suddenly shifts, and he realises that these last five weeks of flirting - that's right, _flirting_ \- have reached their inescapable climax at the most unfortunate day it could ever have happened. He's been flirting with Saeki-san and Saeki-san has been flirting back, and Hikaru has no idea how the ending to that is supposed to go. 

"Shindou," says Saeki-san, and shifts his hand so that he can stroke Hikaru's cheek, "Shindou, is this what you want?"

"I don't know," says Hikaru, which is the pitiful truth.So Saeki-san leans in and presses his mouth into Hikaru's, and Hikaru had never thought it was possible to be so caught in another person that you would forget that time and place existed. Saeki-san's mouth is warm and wet against Hikaru's, the mass of his body is strange and overpowering, the press of his fingers against Hikaru's waist is enough to make Hikaru dizzy with a kind of hunger that he never before has felt. 

"Jeez, Shindou," says Saeki-san, later, when they're eating the cold pizza, but he grins, wide and honest and gut-warming, as he reaches out to touse Hikaru's hair. 

This is the first time Hikaru has ever been kissed and because it is Saeki-san, it takes Hikaru two days to realise that he likes kissing guys. It takes the next few weeks for him to realise that he really, really likes kissing guys, that he's not even a little bit sorry about it and that Waya, as the person he shares his shower with, should know about it. 

Waya seems to take it as just another sign of Hikaru's spoiled childhood. 

"Good riddance," he says when three weeks later, Hikaru tells him to stop being weird about it, he and Saeki-san's decided it's better they stay friends. "Good riddance, for both of you," he repeats and doesn't even look up from folding Hikaru's newly washed underwear.

 

  
 **II. On a distant shorline, she waves her arms to me**

"Oh my God," says Waya, "it's the Korean lapdog."

"What's a lapdog?" says Su-Young, and Waya startles and then he goes pink.

"Since when did he speak Japanese?!"

"Since back in the first time he played in the Hokuto Cup," says Hikaru, "come on, you gotta see this game he played last month ago some retired Korean pro, it was awesome."

In the beginning, there were no words between Hikaru and Su-Young. Hikaru knew no Korean and Su-Young didn't speak Japanese, and English hadn't been the favourite class of either of them. Su-Young's uncle translated between them; the only things they could tell each other directly, had been the things they could tell each other through their Go.

Hikaru Shindou has been taught to face any challenge with open arms and focused eyes. 

Hon Su-Young knows that nothing is more important than showing that he is everything he has every been called. 

Hikaru Shindou has often been accused of being dense, but even he understands that when Su-Young has been studying Japanese for the sole reason of talking to him, it's about something more than a game of Go in some salon full of Korean immigrants. After their second ever game of Go, a question about a game that Hikaru played grows and oozes into a semi-regular exchange about any games of much interest on either side of the sea. It doesn't take too much vocabulary to explain why a move was idiotic, after all, and so they talk in keyboards and monitors, Hikaru with his sentences short and simple, Hon Su-Young in his eagerly broken Japanese. Su-Young teaches Hikaru why Touya-sensei would chose to go to Seoul just to play Koreans. 

Not only does Su-Young have a keen eye for Go, he's also got a keen ear for what's going on with the Korean players these days. Hikaru has met neither Cho Jungsang nor Kim Minpyo, but he feels as if he might as well have, just from hearing the second-hand report about their disastrous game and agitated discussion aftewards. Su-Young is convinced that Jun Hunhyun lost his game solely because he'd just had a bad haircut. Hikaru tells him about Touya's experimentation with his reading glasses.

Suddenly, there are nothing but words happening between Hikaru and Su-Young.

When Su-Young comes to Japan to visit his uncle and make some kind of junior exchange for two weeks Hikaru does not miss the opportunity to show him everything and everyone they have been talking about online.

Fuku is cheerfully impressed by what a kid his own age can accomplish. 

Touya practices his Korean on him. 

Ochi grills him about other Japanese junior players.

Waya plays him with an uncharacteristic wariness.

Mizuhara quizzes him about Koreaon pop groups, and it turns out that not even Waya knew that she had such an appreciation of that kind of music. 

"Come on, he's a Go pro," he says, "you can't expect him to be a human encyclopedia about boy bands."

"Says the guy who can list all players who have been signed to the Seibu Lions the last decade. Hey Su-Young-kun, have you ever eaten _jajangmyeon_?"

"Yes, it's delicious."

"That's it," says Waya and tugs her arm, "I'm not going to let you start planning a holiday in Seoul, the movie starts in thirty minutes."

Hikaru and Su-Young play Go, and Su-Young asks, "Is Mizuhara the girl who come here to teach him washing?", because that's how low their bar for interesting anecdotes about Go professionals in their respective countries has become.

Hikaru doesn't expect it at all when Su-Young is about to go back to his uncle's on the last day, reaches out for his coat, but then pulls back and turns around to stare Hikaru straight into the eyes instead. 

"You know, you change my Go," he says to Hikaru, in that uniquely serious way of his that's gotten Hikaru into trouble with him more than once, "I wish you were in Korea," he continues, and when he touches Hikaru's shoulders and starts leaning in, Hikaru's mind is a complete blank as to what he thinks about this development.

Su-Young's kiss is a hard press of lips against lips, and his fingers are cramped around Hikaru's shoulders. So Hikaru, who doesn't even think that it mightn't be a good idea, reaches up to gently guide Su-Young's head sideways. He helps the kiss become better without even meaning to; he shows Su-Young how to be gentle, to taste the right way, to linger at the right moments. Su-Young obediently follows.

It's funny, how well his body knows this even though he never could have explained it in words if Su-Young were to ask. But then, words were never the most important things between them.

It doesn't last so long, not really, but Hikaru's hand remains on Su-Young's head when he drops back to rest on his heels, and Hikaru suddenly sees that Su-Young's shoulders are starting to widen under his clothes, that his skin is smooth and soft to touch.

The hair on Su-Young's head is so much finer than Saeki-san's.

And then the silence is broken by the sound of the door opening, and Waya announces his homecoming and dumps the groceries to the floor in an act that effectively breaks the spell that so captured Hikaru when it was just he and Su-Young alone.

"I must go," says Su-Young, and starts putting on his coat as Waya is taking his off.

"So soon?" ask Waya, while Hikaru says nothing.

"Yes, the plane is early," says Su-Young, and then he turns to Hikaru. "Shindou, you should write about this," he says, and then he reaches out to shake Hikaru's' hand in western fashion and doesn't let go for five meaningful seconds.  
Then the door closes behind him, and there is a silence that normally wouldn't be there as neither Hikaru nor Waya moves to turn away from it.

"Shindou," Waya asks the question in despair, "you're not _like that_ with Su-Young, are you?"

"So what if I am?" says Hikaru, and his stomach bubbles with that peculiar happiness he hasn't felt in months.

"Oh God," moans Waya, "two times you come home telling me you're involved with someone, and both times it's with other men. What did I ever do to deserve this."

But Hikaru and Su-Young never makes it all the way to being _like that_ ; it's more than a year until the next time they happen to be in the same town at the same time, and by then, things have happened and things have changed, and Hikaru has begged the help of a highly annoyed and deeply uncomfortable Touya for explaining things in a kind of Korean.  
Su-Young still tells him all the good gossip from the Korean Go Instute.

 

  
 **III. Show me your teeth**

Yashiro transfers to the Kanto Go Institute and into Hikaru's life with an ease as if he had always been there.

Waya takes to his his games with a mixture of sincere aggression and intense annoyance. He looses to Yashiro, worse than he's ever lost to Hikaru, but keeps on challenging him and Yashiro keeps on dishing it out.

What's almost as good as Yashiro's games is Yashiro's skills in the kitchen where everything save the kettle and the microwave has been left untouched in a reverence born out of ignorance and fear. Yashiro steps towards it as if he owns the place, and then he might as well do, because it obeys his every whim. Yashiro lives in a tiny bedsit with an a kettle and a fridge, and he claims their kitchen like a historical warlord with no questions asked, no room left for mercy. 

Hikaru loves him for it. 

Yashiro plays Go that either sparkles or explodes, and when he's not doing that, he's usually commanding the blue flames of their stove.

He makes curry that is better than both Hikaru's mum and Waya's. 

He cooks nikujaga with potatoes so tender that they melt on Hikaru's tongue, but miraculously do not fall to pieces as he ladles it up.

His miso is like a memory of the good old days that they never lived in, his omurice makes a delicacy out of leftovers. 

Hikaru fills his mouth with Yashiro's food and his head with Yashiro's Go, he chews and swallows and they play the most insane Go together. Waya complaints about that as he's doing the dishes, but he's still running back and forth between the sink and the board every time a stone is placed. 

It's like it's just natural that it's in the kitchen that things spin into a new track entirely, at four in the morning, with all the guests gone and Waya passed out in his room, and they're both drunk as Yashiro asks, "So is it true, were you really dating that Saeki guy?"

"Yeah, sure I was, for five weeks! Who told you?"

But that, Hikaru never gets to know, because Yashiro pushes him into a chair and sits down in his lap. 

He kisses Hikaru like he's trying to eat him. 

So Hikaru sits in one of their unmatching kitchen chairs and lets Yashiro thrust his tongue into his mouth as if he's trying to taste anything else than the beer they've both been drinking, let's Yashiro lick at his teeth. When Yashiro tries to pull back, Hikaru raises his hands to keep him in place, and somehow his hands end up at Yashiro's waist and then they are under his clothes.

After that, Yashiro shows him that there are other things you can put in your mouth, too.

When Waya sees them both coming out of Hikaru's room the next morning, he only greets Yashiro as if this should be any other day, and when Yashiro is gone, he rolls his eyes dramatically.

"I can't even be bothered with you anymore, Shindou."

It continues until it reaches the point where Yashiro somehow has fresh underwear in Hikaru's room. Then, there's an accident and Yashiro's dad ends up in the hospital for three months, and Yashiro packs up and goes back to Kansai. In the empty kitchen, Hikaru hands Waya the phone without a word so that he can read the long-ish e-mail and make his own judgments about it. 

"Oh, damn," says Waya, sincerely upset, "he was the best of the lot, too."

It's months before food starts tasting good again.

 

  
 **IV. I stand corrected**

It isn't the kind of thing that looks at all out of the usual unless you know what the usual looks like. But Hikaru's been there and knows exactly what it feels like from the other side, and something deep and dark inside of him throbs as Isumi-san declines the offer of coffee and doesn't say that it's because he'd rather wait for Saeki-san to finish his game. Isumi-san cannot quite hide the embarassement of his lie and Hikaru, God help him, wouldn't mind it ia all if Isumi-san was to lie to him some more. 

"Why don't I - " he starts, but he never gets to make the spontaneous offer to wait along with him because Waya, bless him, rams his elbow into his side with all the subtletly of a cartoon anvil. Isumi-san, his attention already back at the closed door to the game room, doesn't notice the shameful exchange.

"Fine, knock yourself out, we'll be sitting in the cafeteria where the chairs are comfy," Waya announces in an odd voice and pulls Hikaru along by the arm the way he's been known to do when he thinks Hikaru is being intolerable in some situation. Hikaru stumbles along while looking over his shoulder at where Isumi-san is still staring at some point beyond the door across of him with a small, besotted kind of smile on his perfect mouth and his beautiful dark eyes shining with an emotion that Hikaru knows all too well, and knows all too well isn't for him.

By the time he and Saeki-san walks past the cafeteria without noticing Hikaru and Waya still sitting there, their cups are so long since empty that the coffee stains are drying on the saucers. There's nothing at all obvious about the way they leave the building together, and only Hikaru's knowing eyes can read the language of the missing gap between their shoulders. When Saeki-san tousles Isumi-san's hair, Hikaru is intensely aware of how the black strands fall back over his eyes as Isumi-san laughs, happy and embarassed. 

"Shindou," says Waya, "come on, it's best this way."

"Shut up," says Hikaru and doesn't turn to look at him until he no longer can see Isumi-san, because Waya, it's certified, knows nothing. 

"Sure, but listen for a second." 

"How come you aren't more upset about this, anyhow? You sure were bitching about it when I was going out with Saeki-san. The way you act around him, you'd think you were more concerned with Isumi-san's innocence than with mine," says Hikaru, poisonously.

"You were sixteen and Saeki-san is like eight years older than you. It'd be like if I was going to go out with, with Shigeko-chan or something."

"Seventeen."

"What?"

"I was seventeen, and it's not what you think it is so shove it, okay?"

"Sure, if you'll stop staring at Isumi-san's ass like it could tell you the meaning of life."

That startles Hikaru, badly, and Waya shows no mercy as he continues staring. The best answer Hikaru can come up with is a pitiful kneejerk attempt at derailing the topic. "Anyway, Shigeko-chan's just a kid, it'd be creepy for anyone to be dating her."

"Shindou," says Waya, not without gentleness, "this is the fourth time, okay? I know it when I see it. I'm not going to tell you what you should or shouldn't be doing, but I wouldn't put my money on having anything with Isumi-san anytime soon."

"Shit," says Hikaru and slumps down in his seat, "Waya, don't start this, I _know_ , alright?"

He can tell just from the way Waya exhales that he'd rather do anything than have this conversation. He doesn't say anything more, and they share the silence between them as people are milling around the building and going about things that truly matter.

"Shindou, it's just that you have this amazing... I don't even know what to call it, but it's just not normal to have men running after you the way you do. It really weirded me out when Isumi-san and Saeki-san first started looking at each other- but the thing is, I think this probably a lot deeper than whatever it was that you had going on with Saeki-san back then. Isumi-san is really happy about this, and I'm going to hope that it'll work out for him. I don't think you should get involved with it."

"What kind of guy do you think I am? I'm not an idiot, I know there's no way it's going to happen. Knowing that doesn't make it go away."

"No," says Waya in a voice that is entirely too defeated, "it doesn't, does it."

"Oh, God," says Hikaru, and suddenly he hears the layers beneath the words, hears the ecchoes of unsaid things in the way Waya's eyes have softened every time he has mentioned Isumi-san's name; suddenly, he understands why it is that Waya always seems to just _know_ what's going on in his head, and now Hikaru knows something about Waya's. "You think Isumi-san's ass is hot, too."

 

  
 **V. Take a chance on me**

"But what about Mizuhara?"

"We broke up, because you, you miserable pervert, you have made me think that Isumi-san has a hotter ass than any girl I've ever looked at, Mizuhara included."

Waya's face is buried in his his hands and his elbows are resting on his knees, but Hikaru has seen Waya when Waya is truly deprived of all hope. This pose, this voice, is the Waya that is demonstrating his utter defeat by their shared incompetence, not that Hikaru is certain where exactly the incompetence has happened this time. 

"Okay," he says, trying to make out the exact picture that Waya will not admit to, "so you're gay, too."

"Don't lump me in with you, you freak," says Waya and dramatically falls sideways on their couch, hiding his eyes under his arm, "I had a normal life before you and I moved in together and you started dragging your boyfriends into the house."

Never mind that none of them had been his boyfriends when he first met them.

"Well, you're into Isumi-san."

"Generally speaking, Shindou. No, I'm not 'into' Isumi-san the way you are into Isumi-san, I just think he has a magnificent backside and I imagine that there's nothing in this world that would be quite as fine as touching it."

"I think that sounds plently like being into him."

Waya finally sits up, and he fixes Hikaru with a look that is simulatenously aggravated and resigned.

"So help me, Shindou, I'm probably going to kill you by the end of this conversation so I might as well just tell you. It's not Isumi-san, it's you, you and those goddamn eyes you make every time you see him and Saeki-san together, that's what's my problem."

"Well, sorry! Maybe you should try keeping your nose out of other people's business if it bothers you so much!"

"Oh my God, you fucking idiot!" Waya exclaims, "I'm saying that it's because of you that I've started noticing guys! I've been noticing other guys because I've been noticing _you_ , you stupid jerk!"

It takes him a few seconds to fully decipher the sentence, and when it does, his reply is a very eloquent, "no way."

"Yes, Shindou, yes way.

"So it's me, you're into _me_?"-

And Waya doesn't answer, but crosses his arms and glares at him in a way that dares him to ask that question again.

So Hikaru kisses him. It's not as if he hasn't got plenty of practice by now; he knows perfectly well how to touch him and how to tug him closer by his hair, how to push him back into the pillows and the ultimately down on his back so that Hikaru can follow him down. Waya's arms fall down the moment Hikaru licks at his lips, and then they come up around his shoulders when Hikaru takes Waya's upper lip between his own. Waya is weirdly careful, and Hikaru wonderes, when Waya startles at having his sides stroked, if Mizuhara never did this to him.

It isn't like the first time he kissed Saeki-san, all insane nerves and months of a silly schoolboy crush. It's a world apart from that time he was kissed by Su-Young on his way out of the door. It's way, way different than Yashiro, where it always seemed to be as much body as anything else involved. Waya's hands are gentle against him and Waya's mouth is pliant beneath his, and it's odd, how he never before thought to wonder what it would be like if that was Waya in Yashiro's place. 

Afterwards, he lies with his head on Waya's chest, and he doesn't want to speak because he doesn't want Waya's fingers to stop combing his hair. It's Waya who breaks the silence.

"Shindou," he says, "listen, if this gets weird, and if you're going to continue moping about Isumi-san, then I'm not out of here, okay? I'm not looking to be a part of your gay Casanova harem, but you've never lasted more than a few months with anyone and I can't be bothered with finding someone else to room with."

"But we've lived together for years," says Hikaru as he plays with Waya's hair, "if we're going to do this, then that's probably the best indication you'll get."

"Okay," says Waya, his eyes soft and his mouth nervous, "let's assume that it is for now. One more thing."

"Yeah?"

"You start changing your socks daily."

"Yes, dear," says Hikaru, and he is pretty sure that something good is beginning when kisses Waya again.


End file.
